Tuesday, July 31, 2007

First there Obama Girl. Then Giuliani Girl. Now there is Brownback Girl. Looking quite similar to Dana Carvey's Saturday Night Live character "The Church Lady," Brownback Girl has found her "Mr. Religious Right," Kansas senator and Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback.

The music video stars Bucky Walters and is produced by the opinion staff of the Wichita Eagle. Click here to sing and dance along. But control yourselves--no same sex couples, please.

And one week ago I was in Wichita, away from Mrs. Marathon Pundit. I missed my chance to hook up with "Brownback Girl."

I listened to what is still the latest Pajamas Media Blow Week in Review podcast on the Saturday before I left for Kansas, but I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.

Moderator Austin Bay interviews blogging pioneer James Lileks, who blogged before, well these things were called blogs.

Lileks talks about the challenges facing the newspaper business, as well as his new role as "content wrangler" for Buzz.mn. The site is similar to the Daily Herald's Beep Central, which has been wise enough to add my blog to their community.

For fans of Isaac Asimov, you'll be pleased to hear Lileks makes use of the word "Trantorian," a reference to Trantor, the capital planet of the Galactic Empire in many of Asimov's books.

As always, the podcast is produced by Ed Driscoll. Pajamas Media Blog Week in Review is sponsored by Volvo US.

No iPod of iPhone is required to listen to or download the podcast, you can tune in by clicking here.

Or if you are lucky like me and own an iPod, you can sign up for a free subscription via the iTunes site.

Now here's a story that will keep me busy. The Kennedy Family, that clan of environmentalists led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, will be building a luxury hotel and and office complex just west of Chicago's Merchandise Mart, pictured above, which the family owned for over sixty years.

Let's see if the Kennedys practice what they preach on environmentalism as the new building goes up.

Because of their hypocrisy on the proposed Cape Wind project near their Hyannis Port compound, I'm skeptical. However, according to this real estate publication, the Merchandise Mart is making some "green" improvements.

Scottish Muslims have balked at the planned staging of a satirical musical about "Islamic extremists" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, fearing it would fan Islamophobia in the country against the backdrop of the failed Glasgow attack.

"It will make negative perceptions of Islam worse," Sohaib Saeed, Manager of the Islam Festival Edinburgh (IFE), told IslamOnline.net on Tuesday, July 31, over the phone from the capital of Scotland.

The satirical show, Jihad the Musical, will have its first world premiere at the Edinburgh festival, the world's largest arts festival, on Wednesday, August 1.

Featuring songs such as 'I wanna be like Osama' and 'I Only See Your Eyes', it tells the story of Afghan peasant Sayid who is entrapped and then brainwashed by "jihadis" seeking to blow up targets in the West.

One of the characters in the play is the "sinister reporter" Foxy Redstate.

Sen. Barack Obama was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa yesterday at a school named for Theodore Roosevelt, and used the great president's legacy to criticize President Bush, claiming that our current chief executive wants to create a "second gilded age."

Obama said he chose Roosevelt as an example because he took office at a time when wealth was concentrated in a very few hands and because he earned his reputation by going against the rich.

"It was an era known as the gilded age," said the Illinois senator. "Theodore Roosevelt decided not to play along."

Roosevelt earned a repution as a "trust buster," but the gilded age Obama refers to, by most historians' accounts, ended with the Panic of 1893, eight years before Teddy Roosevelt was sworn in as president.

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